


Eccentric Orbits

by stephanericher



Series: KnB Star Wars AU [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:42:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks between them, but they’re not fooling anyone with the way they look at each other, with the way they’re still connected in the Force as if a bridge is running over her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eccentric Orbits

It’s easy to open herself up to the Force in a place like this. The Coruscant underworld is so busy and fraught with emotion that she can’t tune into it without letting herself go a little, without molding herself to fit its moldy walls and slithering dealmakers—there is malevolence, fright tinged with despair (on the horizon of tilting into it full scale) and anger, smug satisfaction and wariness and elation and emotions that are too blunted by substance for her to know what they are, hovering in the air. Alex closes her eyes, leaning on the wall. Their eyes slide over her; she can’t feel what she’s searching for—and then she feels something so utterly familiar she almost tenses. It’s enough to break her out of the delicate attunement, but it’s also enough to direct her where to go next. Once she’s looking for him, in his general direction, he’s easy to find, alone at a booth with a datapad in one hand. His other’s under the table, on his blaster no doubt. She pushes through the labyrinth of people and tables, and still their eyes slide over yet another cloaked stranger.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she says, as she slides into the booth next to him.

He looks up. “An unexpected pleasure.”

Even if she couldn’t read all the fractional twists in his lips, or feel the way his Force presence opens up ever-so-slightly, she’d know he means every word of it. And so without warning she reaches over and hugs him. He lets her pull him close for a second before worming his way out of her grip.

“This isn’t the place, Alex.”

She reaches out to ruffle his hair and he ducks away. He’ll never be too old or too slick for this, and in the range of inappropriate situations a bar where someone might see them getting physical and assume something else isn’t the worst. She reaches out with the Force again; no one’s even paying attention to them.

“You should have told me you were coming,” she says.

Tatsuya shrugs. “I’m only here for a few days.”

 _And I’m not doing anything you should know about_ , rings unspoken in the air like a broadcast message. He knows she’d never rat him out; his business is his business (and she’s not exactly the most by-the-book jedi) and so when it’s not interfering directly with her mission she has no reason to let anyone know what kind of illegal substances he’s smuggling in. But he’s not going to put her in that position—or Taiga, either.

“You should see him.”

“He’s here?”

“Yeah. Hasn’t left the planet in a while.”

Tatsuya bites his lip. Oh, he wants to (and he knows Taiga would love to see him) but there’s still the matter of his business, the things he wishes to protect Taiga from even though Taiga’s well past the point of being able to understand and accept them and defend himself. There’s something so ridiculous about this, about how good Tatsuya is at self-denial and how he pretends to will away his attachments—he would have made, in some ways, the perfect jedi, and more than ever she is glad now that the temple didn’t take him.

“I’ll comm him,” she says. “You have an apartment?”

He nods. “Meet me outside.”

As she walks back through the crowd, she feels a flash of malevolence in the force, a flash that is quickly silenced and overtaken by Tatsuya’s presence. He hadn’t wanted her to see that, either—and, well, knowing or suspecting is different from having it happen right in front of you. But he should know by now it won’t make either of them love him any less.

* * *

They wait for Taiga in a back alleyway; she can feel him rushing through the streets from several blocks off, reaches out to him. He touches her presence back, and then he feels Tatsuya’s—and starts moving three times as fast. Tatsuya feels it, too; surprise and relief and anticipation cover him in the Force and then Taiga turns the corner. They embrace.

It’s like a shout in the Force, a joyous cacophony, their presences mixing as Taiga lifts Tatsuya up and their bodies fold around each other like two parts of a highly customized machine, Tatsuya’s face in Taiga’s chest and Taiga’s face in Tatsuya’s hair and arms locked around each other’s torsos. There is passion, attachment, everything the council explicitly forbids—but inseparable from that there is love, running deep like a current of moisture in the Tatooine underground. It’s pure, fraught with complication but steadying itself between them; they’re murmuring words to each other that Alex can’t catch, in their own private world five feet away from her. They’ve probably forgotten that she’s there, and she doesn’t particularly feel the need to remind them right now (they get so little of this already).

It’s probably fifteen minutes later when Tatsuya finally turns to her. “Shall we?”

She walks between them, but they’re not fooling anyone with the way they look at each other, with the way they’re still connected in the Force as if a bridge is running over her head.

* * *

It’s good to be around both of them; it’s good to all be together—not like the old days, very different from then, but bringing the same fondness, lazing on Tatsuya’s couch while he and Taiga cook, occasionally interjecting into their conversation. It’s good to see them both so happy like this, so happy despite themselves and despite their jobs and the physical distance that so often lies between them. Sometimes she wonders what would have happened to them if they’d stayed back home, but she doubts they would have even if she hadn’t come across them. They’d have found some way out, some way where they’d have been in conflict, perhaps not peacekeeper and law-enforcer versus someone who makes his dirty money by subverting and blatantly disrespecting legislation but never something easy. (It was never easy for them, even when they were young and alone in the desert with only each other, only themselves to come between them.) But they can stave it all off for hours, be like this together, because in the end it all came down to how much they loved each other, and it still does. It’s the reason they put up with the difficulties, the reason it’s so difficult for them in the first place. And it’s why Tatsuya can pause in chopping vegetables when Taiga picks him up and why Taiga can bring Tatsuya so close and almost let the meat burn because he’s too preoccupied with the sound of Tatsuya’s laughter.

And, well, as much as she enjoys them she has a report to make to the council (some lies to create about false leads) and she’s not selfish enough to impose herself on their brief and precious time together for too long. They’ve humored her long enough.

“I should go.”

Tatsuya’s eyes flicker to Taiga.

“Stay,” says Alex. “I have some business with the council, nothing important but…it has to be done.”

Tatsuya hugs her before she goes.

“Tell me next time you’re here,” she says, and he smiles (he won’t, but that doesn’t mean she won’t say it anyway).

She can feel their presences melting together before she even shuts the door, the warm happiness bubbling over like foam on one of those fancy caf drinks. And she can’t keep the smile off her own face as she strolls back to the temple in the early dusk.

**Author's Note:**

> 300th ao3 fic yeahhhhh (y)


End file.
